


then moon, then stars

by damnslippyplanet



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-typical levels of Hannibal's gaslighting fuckery, Gen, Hannibal Lecter's Finishing School For Select Young Murder Interns, Season/Series 02, The Heart Wants What It Wants, This canon did not need one more Persephone story and yet here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 10:03:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14767485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: Louise Hobbs had been a deer in a family of hunters and she’d never really known who her daughter was.  Abigail supposed it had been a matter of survival, and if she’d blamed her mother for it once, she didn’t anymore.  So there was no mother to search for Abigail in the place she had gone, which may as well have been under the earth.





	then moon, then stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EmilyElm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilyElm/gifts).



_Gradually, he thought, he’d introduce the night,_

_first as the shadows of fluttering leaves._

_Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars._

_Let Persephone get used to it slowly._

_In the end, he thought, she’d find it comforting._

_~ Louise  Glück, "A Myth of Devotion"_

 

 

 

Abigail didn’t have a mother anymore.

She’d had one, in a manner of speaking, but Louise Hobbs had been a deer in a family of hunters and she’d never really known who her daughter was.  Abigail supposed it had been a matter of survival, and if she’d blamed her mother for it once, she didn’t anymore.

So there was no mother to search for Abigail in the place she had gone, which may as well have been under the earth.

 

* * *

 

Hannibal gave her newspapers, but not the internet.  A land line, but no cell phone.

She had pillows she was reasonably certain were _not_  stuffed with human hair.  She had a small but wide-ranging library. He brought her food at intervals and enough pills to keep the pain in her head at bay, and she never asked the provenance of either.

There were lights far down the shore, but she didn’t feel motivated to go looking for their source, and she kept her own curtains drawn tight at night.

It felt safe, which felt close enough to freedom. Not a home, but something like it.

 

* * *

 

He always set the place on his right as well: it sat empty, waiting.  

Abigail asked once: how many place settings he put out at his own table at home.

“One,” he’d said, fork arrested halfway to his mouth, a drop of the sauce - red, rich with some fruit she’d never tasted before - threatening to fall back onto the meat below.  “I receive unexpected visitors more often than I used to and I’m not inclined to invite questions.” The fork returned to his plate and he reached for her instead, his hand a weight on hers.  “You’re with me there, regardless. Both of you, whether I have company or not.”

A laugh bubbled up unbidden, the wine in her blood making its presence known as she thought of Hannibal all alone, talking to her imaginary self and Will’s, in that overbearing dining room.

“The conversation must be great.”

“Just so,” Hannibal agreed.  He didn’t seem to know it had been a joke.

She took another bite, seeds bursting sweet on her tongue.

 

* * *

 

She took her pills: before bed, at midday.  Her ear was healing but the risk of infection was high enough to warrant precautions, Hannibal told her.  Out here alone, where he couldn’t visit her to check every day, she’d need to keep taking them for some time.

They made her stupid, her thoughts fuzzy and slow, but it wasn’t as if there were other demands on her time.  She slept often, great chunks of time missing. Sometimes she didn’t even wake up to hear Hannibal come or go; she’d only know he’d been there when she woke up to groceries in the kitchen or fresh flowers on the dining table.

She would have bet money, if she’d had anyone to make bets with, that Hannibal thought she ate formal meals in his absence.  He probably thought she set the table for three. Instead, she woke ravenous at three a.m. and ate ice cream on the couch. She dripped some once, and flipped the cushion to hide the stain.

 

* * *

 

There were days when there were other medicines: in a tea like the mushrooms the day Hannibal signed her out of the hospital, or in a syringe that was okay as long as she didn’t watch the needle slide in.

She slept even more heavily afterwards and dreamed of rickety boats and wide, dark rivers and a ferryman with nothing as recognizable as a face.

"I have trouble remembering what we talk about after I drink that stuff,” she said. “The mushrooms were better.  Everything just seemed friendly, and I could remember it.”

Hannibal didn’t seem concerned.

“You’re making excellent progress,” he said.  “If you don’t remember all of our therapeutic conversations, it’s likely your own mind protecting you from the traumatic things you experienced at your father’s table.  We’ll keep working through this together, and you’ll remember in your own time, when you’re ready.”

Abigail frowned, or thought she did - it was one of the days when her entire body felt  like a bad connection, her motions firing two steps behind her mind.

“I actually feel pretty good,” she said.  “It’s good, out here where there’s no one to recognize me. I don’t _feel_ traumatized.”

“That’s excellent,” Hannibal said. He beamed bright enough that Abigail couldn’t help but feel it too; a sort of reflected pride at their good work, even if she couldn’t quite remember it, slippery as her recollections were around the edges.

 

* * *

 

The winding path down to the beach was overgrown and tricky to walk.  Hannibal came to stay for a few days and they worked together clearing it so she could walk down to the shore on nice days.  If they were still waiting for Will when spring came, she could swim, and meanwhile it would be a nice place to stretch her legs.  

It felt good to move around, to get sweaty in the weak winter sun and pull weeds and tall grass until her muscles ached.  It was a satisfying, clean sort of ache, not like the dull pounding in her temples when she woke, before the pills wiped it away.

As they worked, Hannibal told her the latest news from Will’s trial.  There were interesting developments, he said. Hope that Will would be free soon.

“Even then,” he cautioned, “it will be some time before he’s ready to accept our new life.  He’s had a difficult time, our Will.”

Afterwards, back in the house, Hannibal unpacked an array of fancy small dishes from a cooler.  The extras from a party, he’d said, set aside for her. It was a shame Abigail couldn’t have been there; she’d have been the loveliest guest and far better company than the other attendees.

Most of the food was delicious but Abigail couldn’t quite stomach the squab legs with the claws still attached.  Once Hannibal left again, she tossed them one by one over the cliff’s edge and watched them vanish into the night.  Too far down to see, something howled.

 

* * *

 

“You can’t stay here forever,” the faceless ferryman said, and in the dream Abigail didn’t stop to wonder how he could speak.  “This place isn’t meant for that. You need to pay the fare and go, if you’re going.”

“I don’t have anything to pay you with,” she answered, her hands and pockets empty.

“Your mother was supposed to be here.”  His voice sharpened with frustration. “She should have come for you by now.”

Abigail’s hand twitched with a sudden urge to touch the healed line of her scarred throat.  With the terrible certainty of a dream, she knew that if she did it would come away wet.

She kept her fists clenched tight at her side.  

“She should have done a lot of things, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

It took several moments to recognize the sharp bark of the ferryman as laughter.  

 

* * *

 

Hannibal came less often, now that Will was free.  "A delicate time," he said, "and he needs my attention right now.  We’ll all be together again soon enough, my dear."

They would; and Abigail didn’t mind the wait.  What else was there for her?

She flipped idly through the Italian lessons that had appeared, but mostly she slept and read and walked on the shore.  There were wild dogs that appeared sometimes in the afternoon. Three of them, she thought, but it was hard to tell - they played and fought and ran so close together that they might have been only one beast after all.  She liked to watch them but didn’t get close; there was no point in trying to tame them when she wouldn’t be here much longer.

 _Will would have them eating out of his hand by the second day_ , she thought.  

But Abigail wasn’t Will; she was barely herself.

 

* * *

 

On the last day, she packed a few things.  The book she was reading, a few changes of clothes, and the papers with her face and someone else’s name.

“Bring anything you absolutely need,” Hannibal said, distracted.  His attention was only half with her. “We may be able to return here for a few days but it’s prudent to be prepared for any possibility.”

They were only going to Hannibal’s house  It would be a straight drive with no stops, and there was no reason to think anyone would see her.  Abigail still felt a little panicky, a pressure in her chest like a spring wound too tight. Hannibal locked the door and tucked the key away under the garden bench.

Hannibal mistook Abigail’s sudden shiver and moved a few paces ahead to open the car door for her.  “You may want to zip up your jacket,” he suggested, and she did it without thinking. The jacket helped only a little as she climbed into the car. The skies were grey and the wind bit at her face.  Somewhere below, she thought she heard the dogs barking.

She leaned her forehead against the window to watch her home recede into the distance, and then to watch the rest of the world slip by outside the window.  Trees lined both sides of the road, bare and shivering.

Hannibal still brought her newspapers.  She’d stopped reading them, but she checked the dates.  It should have been warm by now; flowers should be in bloom.

Maybe in Italy she would be able to feel the sun, but spring hadn’t come here.  Not to the ocean; not for Abigail. If there was spring somewhere, it couldn’t find her where she’d gone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic idea bit me on the very last day of the festival, so I'm afraid it's hastily written and un-betaed, but I've missed writing for the Fannibals and I hope you will accept a somewhat rough story as a token of my love, and that the wonderful EmilyElm will enjoy it as fulfillment of her Fandom Loves Puerto Rico order to write whatever I wanted.


End file.
